Doug Ross @ Journal

George Soros: at the helm of the Terror-crats

As a veritable fountainhead of currency for the Democratic Party, George Soros talks softly and carries a big wallet. His purse is sufficiently large to warrant an op-ed piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The piece, entitled "A Self-Defeating War," is the predictable stew of Bush-hatred and anti-Americanism wrapped into a logical conundrum worthy of Ernő Rubik or Wayne "Soduku" Gould.

I've annotated Soros' key points for sheer entertainment value. Believe me, expending the energy to scroll down the page is worth the price of admission.

The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11, a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia... ...What makes the war on terror self-defeating? • First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims. A war waged against terrorists is even more likely to claim innocent victims because terrorists tend to keep their wereabouts hidden... [the death of innocents] in turn serves to build support for terrorists...

As opposed to simply executing hundreds of school-children in cold blood at Beslan. Or gassing thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Halabja, Iraq. Or intentionally killing scores of innocent office workers in downtown Manhattan. Or the thousands of other related attacks, most intentionally directed at civilians.

As opposed to that.

Soros' "fighting _________ causes more _________" meme didn't work for any scourge throughout the annals of history, whether we use the Khmer Rouge, Communism, Nazism, the Mongol Hordes, or anything in between to fill in the blanks. And, in fact, the key takeaway in each case is that more civilians died -- millions of them -- because good people failed to respond in time.

• Second, terrorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrenction and the Mahdi army... are very different forces...

But they all have something in common. Trying to put my finger on it... trying... trying... I suppose I'll have to do a little research.

Perhaps extremist terrorism is an "abstraction." But it's sufficiently focused and dangerous enough to have intentionally targeted millions of innocent civilians for death and succeeded in killing plenty already... throughout the world. Saddam Hussein and other terrorists have killed a hundred times more Muslims than Allied forces (not to mention the millions of Muslim lives saved in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq).

• Third, the war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions... Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large, we need to focus on finding them...

Interesting. Within a few paragraphs, Mr. Soros has succeeded in wrapping himself around the axle. His first bullet points out that weeding out terrorists who hide among innocents causes more terrorism. This, his third bullet, states the opposite: that we need to find terrorist leaders hiding among innocents, which will certainly require deadly force and result in civilian deaths. So... which is it? #1 or #3? And how far down the terrorist leadership hierarchy are we permitted to go?

As for "political solutions", Israel has tried to live peacefully on its tiny sliver of land for nearly sixty years. For decades it has begged the world community for a diplomatic solution. Surrounded by hundreds of times its population and land-mass, it has been unable to achieve any semblance of a "political solution." Why would Soros claim that extremists, who have launched murderous attacks throughout the world, would listen to any sort of reason when there is absolutely no evidence it would make a difference?

We can only come to one of two conclusions, both of which are outlined below.

• Fourth, the war on terror drives a wedge between "us" and "them." We are innocent victims. They are perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process...

At last, Soros pulls out the tired and intellectually bankrupt "moral equivalence" card.

The United States and its allies have nuclear weapons and are loathe to use them. The extremists, on the other hand, have promised -- up to the point of issuing religious edicts ("fatwas") to use any and all weaponry including nuclear arms ("We have the right to kill four million Americans - 2 million of them children..."). There is no need to treat that promise with anything less than utter seriousness.

It will only take one nuclear weapon in the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or any other extremist group to usher in a new era of violence on this planet.

Moral equivalence in the face of this disparity is not naivete. It is either base ignorance or high treason. Which is it in your case, Mr. Soros?

Taken together, these four factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won...

Soros, at last, comes clean and plainly states the key platform of the Terror-crats: surrender.

Because the extremists have plainly stated that their endgame is to detonate nuclear devices in multiple Western cities -- whether to bring about Armageddon or simply to eradicate vast numbers of "Crusaders" from the face of the earth -- surrender to these murderous zealots means the annihilation of modern civilization.

If we don't vigorously and aggressively defend the West from this catastrophic endgame, our children and grandchildren will pay the price.

How many Americans have to die before the terror-crats join in the fight against terrorism? A hundred thousand? A million? Ten million? When will survival of the West take precedence over raw partisanship? I'd just like to know that number.

Recommended Reading: Hugh Hewitt's If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat